~ Encouraging Others One Hopeful Truth At A Time

Tag Archives: truth

Current trials can blind us to the history we have with Jesus. If he has done it once, won’t he do it again? I was reminded again {sometimes we need a spiritual smack} of how far the Lord has brought me and what he has “already” done in my life. A moment of reflection brought me to tears as I was asked “Don’t you remember Em?” Yes Lord, I remember how many times you picked me up and mended this broken heart of mine. I remember every time you miraculously met a need. I remember the moments you divinely guided me in the right direction. I remember how you rescued me from myself. Lord, I remember. Go back today and be reminded of all the Lord has done. Speak of it. Tell someone. Encourage yourself and others with the proof of his faithfulness. Won’t he do it again? Yes, my friends, he will!

I have heard it said that “God will not give us more then we can handle.” I disagree. There have been so many moments that l could not handle what I was going through. But this did not mean that God couldn’t handle it.

All throughout scripture people have cried out in desperation. Faint at heart. Crushed. Broken. Beyond their capabilities of handling their situation. Sound familiar? Their example shows me where they went…higher…to God.

In our weakness we are told to lean, put all our weight upon the Lord. He is careful to hold us through the trial. His mercy, compassion, and love shields us in ways we can’t see. The presence of trials is not the absence of Gods mercy. Today, rather than looking at my pain I will look to the one who can alleviate it. The healer. Sustainer. All faithful One. I will go higher.

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. – Psalm 61:1-3

So, the other day my hubby and I were having a heart to heart. Love those with him. He is usually very quiet, so the conversationalist in me rejoices in these moments. Since the cancer diagnosis {9 months ago} a lot has changed, mostly our perspective. How we live and why. Trauma does this. It rearranges, subtracts, and adds to life. We don’t get to choose the unexpected, but we can choose how we respond to it.

It’s easy to become cynical. Angry. Bitter. That’s the path of least resistance. Looking for the good and purpose requires more thought, time, and effort. People usually quit before they find it. Fatigue sets in. Hopelessness drains hearts. Lies steal futures and then our choices destroy us.

We make excuses for inexcusable things just because of what has happened to us. Life. Family. Struggle. We give it all to much credit for all the wrong reasons. I am guilty of glorifying the pain and the ones responsible for it. A huge part of my life was lived being hurt by those hurting from others hurting them. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to end now!

Cancer is not an excuse, neither is abuse, rape, poverty, violence, or any other horrible thing the enemy throws at us to become one who victimizes others and ourselves with our poor choices and thoughtless actions.

Choice. It’s a beautiful, fragile, powerful thing, yet we don’t always handle it with care. I’ve learned that not making a choice, is a choice. When we choose to sit back and do nothing with the life we’ve been given it’s a waste of the potential we have inside of us.

You see, our life doesn’t end at the end of the struggle if we still have breath. Purpose can be born out of the struggle if we don’t grow weary and trust that God is faithful to complete what he started in us.

This was the heart to heart we had. What are we gonna do about where we’ve been? The good. The bad. The ugly. It all matters. Can we become people who allow God to use our struggle, pain, and past to be expamples of what hope and victory look like? I pray we can.

I want to blaze a trail of hope for my children and generations to come. I want and need my life, all of it, to count. I won’t accept it was all for nothing. When God said, all things work together for the good of them who love him and are called according to his purpose, I believed him!! And now I have to partner with him to see that purpose revealed and lived out.

No more excuses. No more causing pain because we hurt too. Enough is enough. We have lives waiting on us to be who we are meant to be. You are someone’s example, blessing, and trailblazer. Don’t quit now! Be the someone you needed and I promise you you’ll find your purpose.

There’s no going back to the way things were. Honestly, I don’t want it to. Why? I’ve learned what it is to be strengthened in difficulty. To rely on God with every fiber of my being. I’ve seen miracles happen. Hearts transformed. Cancer won’t become our excuse. No, it’ll be our launching pad that propels us closer to our purpose!!

“Don’t buy the lie that you can become a hero without ever engaging in the battle.”

Lisa Bevere

Good morning my friends!! If there is one thing I’m passionate about it’s the truth. Knowing it. Believing it. Living in it. Telling it. In my house we do superheroes all day, everyday. Every superhero movie I’ve ever watched {there’s been A LOT, remember I have 4 boys} there was battle. In the end good wins {love that} but never before engaging in war. We will have to fight through the bad days, the struggles, the generational curses, the lies, the shame, the regret, and whatever you may be facing today to earn hero status! Victory is already ours, but we have to fight!! How? Don’t believe the lies of the enemy when he comes charging at you with your past. When he throws darts of shame your way. When he whispers lies of defeat and doom in your ear. Fight back with the word of God that says you are more than a conqueror! You are the righteousness of God! Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world! You are loved. You’ve been chosen. We have to arm ourselves with truth to win! We must know it, believe it, and USE it! I want to be the hero of faith in my family, my community, that stands up to lies and sets the captives free…Don’t you?

Living life afraid had been my normal. My faith in humanity and in God had been tested and hurt was inevitable. I was afraid to trust. Afraid to make decisions. Afraid to speak truth. Afraid to trust my instinct. Afraid of myself.

My journey from fear to freedom has been one I never expected to go on. What was a horrible mess ended up being my moment of escape from this prison of fear. I had a choice. Was I willing to allow God to remove the fear {heal me} or once again, avoid it? Avoidance was so much easier and a lot less painful. Avoidance and hiding are besties. We hide to avoid whatever it is we can’t confront or deal with. Heavy stuff, I know. Truth is we don’t really know who we are without the pain. Our pain, fear, and mess is who we’ve become, but God has a different plan and identity for us.

Are we willing to find out what they are? I was and what a journey it has been.

I was taken to the back side of the desert, hundreds of miles from home, no friends or family, to experience God differently. It has been so painful at times I thought I would die. Sounds a little melodramatic but it’s true. Through crazy situations and circumstance I had to unlearn the old mind set and learn a new one. Ouch! Only God can cut through us and remove the old and not kill us. His steady hand preserves us in this broken, fragile, and vulnerable stage. Thank you Jesus!

Receiving our new identity requires a trade. The old for the new. We give him all our funk {mind sets, hurts, sin, fears, hate, anger, shame, misconceptions, etc.} and he gives us a crown {Y’all know how much I love that part} that says…I am the Kings kid. I now wear a robe of righteousness that says…I am forgiven. I now walk in victory because I no longer fight alone. My feelings no longer control me, the truth does.

This is who I am. This is who I’ve always been destined to be…a child of God who knows who she is and who her Father is. This is a constant evolving discovery that I have come to cherish. I wouldn’t change one moment {I wouldn’t want to do it over again either} because they all led me here to my true indenity…forgiven, free, brave and deeply loved, Princess Emilie! 💞

Don’t you hate it when a thought interrupts your day and overstays it’s welcome?! Me too!! I was doing the dishes {when am I not?} and I had a thought about dishonest people {ugh}. Trying to decode why people lie is almost impossible. You’ll hear lots of reasons why but truth is there is only one real reason anyone lies…fear. I know all the times I’ve lied {guilty} has been out of fear. Fear of consequences. Fear of what the truth will look /sound like. Fear of what I will look like if I tell the truth. Honestly, the truth sometimes is a scary thing.

Truth requires more out of us. Telling a lie is the easy way out. We don’t have to confront ourselves or others. We get to hide a little bit longer and avoid the inevitable…truth or consequence {a result or effect of an act or condition}. The bible says the truth will set you free…free from what? Free from strings that lies are attached to {my condensed definition}. Guilt. Shame. Condemnation and ultimately sin. We as Christians know the truth {Jesus, his word} and yet we settle for lies everyday that chain and bind us like a slave to the enemy and in return it results in a lifestyle of sin and destruction.

I wanted to judge the liar and realized that I too, have been one. I am one every time I tell myself anything contrary to Gods word; when I comply and agree with the enemy when he whispers lies in my ear. I want to be an honest person but I must know the truth…Gods word! Live it. Believe it. Speak it and then I’m free from lies and the hurt they bring.

Lying is a temporary fix for a deeply rooted fear. God is the only one who can dismantled our fears with his truth and love that leads to right believing and right living. Next time you’re tempted to lie think…What am I afraid of? I guarantee if you process this and begin to practice truth in your inner being you’ll be less tempted to lie to yourself or anyone else.

Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part [of my heart] You will make me know wisdom. Psalm 51:6

Good morning friends!! I feel it in my heart that someone needs to know this today!!

When I was little I heard that children were to be seen and not heard and in order to keep the peace we were to keep quiet. Here’s my thought on that…silence is NOT peace…it’s the absence of sound and how could we ever keep the peace when there was none to begin with?

I saw and experienced injustice and dysfunction all around me as a child. It created a fear based mentality that crippled me from speaking truth. No matter how bad I wanted to speak up I couldn’t. There was no peace only silence; they are NOT the same. The idea that my words could bring destruction haunted me until I discovered that I was meant to bring destruction to lies with Gods word in me!! God has given us an arsenal, his WORD, to combat the lies of the enemy. Had I known that my destiny was to speak and use my words to tear down lies I wouldn’t have wasted so many years in silence. You see the moment a truth is spoken we have just spoken life. We have declared war over death in an area! I love it!! Our words our powerful!! They can bless or curse. They can tear down or build up. They speak life or death. We choose. We have authority in Christ and the enemy wants to keep us from using it.

The lies from my childhood had caused a lot of damage but those lies were no match against Gods truth. It doesn’t happen overnight but this damage can be reversed!! I’ve had to dig deep and discover what God says about me and my life. What he likes and dislikes. What pleases him, what doesn’t. He longs to shed his light on the dark abandoned places of our heart, the areas where no one is allowed to go, not even us. He longs for us to speak the truth to ourselves even if it hurts, even if we’ve never said it out loud…we need to. It’s time to be seen and heard. It’s time to be free.

I don’t know where you are today in your journey but I want to encourage you that you are seen and heard by a God who deeply loves you. He wants you to know his heart towards you. He wants to dismantle every lie and replace it with his freeing truth. He wants to be your friend, your refuge, your safe place to hide. He wants you to know you’re safe with him and in him there is real peace. Friends don’t waste another moment in silence and fear. God is waiting and knocking on your hearts door…will you have the courage to open it and let him in and find your voice?!

If you knew someone to be a liar would you continue to believe a word they said? Sadly, we do it everyday, all day. The bible says the enemy {satan} is the father of lies. His sole purpose is to get us to believe every whisper he says in our ear; you’re not good enough, nothing will ever change, no one loves you, you can’t do that, quit so you don’t look like a fool. These are all lies!!! His primary cause is to draw us away from the truth of Gods word that says; We are overcomers, We are the righteousness of God, We are created for a purpose, Jesus loves us, We can do all things through Christ. We are told to put on the belt of truth because a belt secures our clothing and holds our weapons. It’s crucial that we believe and hold onto the truth of Gods word for our everyday life. For without it we are running into battle unequipped and looking like a fool with our pants on the ground. Honestly, nobody has time for that!! Lord may we discern your voice today above the lies and confusion. Open our ears to know your voice and may every lie of the devil be extinguished in Jesus name…Amen!!!